Mayor's solar plans put city in center of universe

Tuesday

Apr 9, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 9, 2013 at 10:46 AM

LANCASTER, Calif. - There are at least two things to know about this high desert city. One, the sun just keeps on shining. Two, the city's mayor, a class-action lawyer named R. Rex Parris, just keeps on competing.

LANCASTER, Calif. - There are at least two things to know about this high desert city. One, the sun just keeps on shining. Two, the city's mayor, a class-action lawyer named R. Rex Parris, just keeps on competing.

Two years ago, the mayor, a Republican, decided to leverage the incessant Antelope Valley sun so Lancaster could become the solar capital "of the world," he said. Then he reconsidered. "Of the universe," he said, the brio in his tone indicating that it would be parsimonious to confine his ambition to any one planet.

"We want to be the first city that produces more electricity from solar energy than we consume on a daily basis," he said. This means Lancaster's rooftops, alfalfa fields and parking lots must be covered with solar panels to generate a total of 126 megawatts of solar power above the 39 megawatts already being generated and the 50 megawatts under construction.

To that end, Lancaster just did what former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger failed to do in 2006: require that almost all new homes either come equipped with solar panels or be in subdivisions that produce 1 kilowatt of solar energy per house. He also was able to recruit the home-building giant KB Home to proselytize for his vision, despite the industry's overall resistance to solar power.

"Lancaster is breaking new ground," said Michelle Kinman, a clean-energy advocate at Environment California, a research and lobbying group. Kinman, who tracks the growth of solar energy in the state, calculates that the city tripled the number of residential installations in the past 18 months.

While the desert sunshine in California and Arizona helped put those states atop the national solar-energy rankings, towns in cloudier regions are also adopting it. Napoleon, Ohio, for instance, benefits from 14 megawatts of local solar power.

But energy politics in Ohio and other Republican-run states are not solar friendly. This year, Ohio's Republican-dominated public-utilities board blocked construction of a 50-megawatt solar facility on strip-mined land. In Republican-controlled Florida, state law prohibits third parties from installing rooftop solar panels and then selling power to the homeowner, who is relieved of large upfront costs.

But for Lancaster, embracing solar power is not just a matter of energy costs or reliability. It's also about jobs. Like many ex-urban areas in California, Lancaster was hit hard by the housing bust and the recession. The unemployment rate is 15.5 percent. Municipal revenue declined, as did school budgets. As Parris saw it, solar power could mean lower public expenditures and more private jobs.

His solar push began about three years ago; City Hall, the performing arts center and the stadium together now generate 1.5 megawatts. Solar arrays on churches, a big medical office, a developer's office and a Toyota dealership provide 4 more.

After the Lancaster school board rejected an offer from SolarCity, saying it was unaffordable, the city created a municipal utility. It bought 32,094 panels, had them installed on 25 schools, generated 7.5 megawatts of power and sold the enterprise to the school district for 35 percent less than it paid for electricity at the time.

Global warming, the mayor said, eventually will persuade others that locally generated renewable energy may provide a safety net as the cost of cooling desert homes goes up.

Is global warming a threat? Absolutely, he said. "I may be a Republican. I'm not an idiot."